


Blood Ties

by charmquark



Category: Naruto.
Genre: Baby Fic, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-17 10:56:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2307149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charmquark/pseuds/charmquark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sasuke, a hot day, a ritual, and an introduction. ( SasuSaku )</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood Ties

**Author's Note:**

> (Written 01/2012) [](http://triplec.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://triplec.dreamwidth.org/)**triplec** 's holiday request fic. Of course it had to be angsty, and it's not even set in the winter! Oh well.

Hisao began fussing midway to their destination.

Sasuke paused to turn back as the baby squirmed in his mother’s arms, and she shushed him with soothing murmurs over his inarticulate protesting. “What’s wrong?”

“I think the heat is bothering him,” Sakura replied, rocking their son gently as she drew even with Sasuke. She’d always had a better sense for that kind of thing than he; it seemed like she could tell exactly what was going on in Hisao’s head just by listening to the tone of his cries and what few phonetic sounds he’d managed to form into words. Sasuke had learned some, but it was as though she could understand the baby as perfectly as his sharingan could read an opponent’s next move. He chalked it up to motherly instinct, or female intuition, or something like that.

It was a hot day, the hottest of the year so far, but this was Fire Country: it would only get hotter as June gave way to July and then passed on into August. Unlike Suna, Konoha was humid, and Sasuke felt the moisture in the air hang close and oppressive. Hisao would get used that as he grew up in the village, but this summer would only be his second.

He quieted completely when Sasuke took him from Sakura, in view of the cenotaph. That happened, sometimes: he’d still once his father picked him up, and Sasuke never knew quite what to think about that. He wanted to trust Sakura’s intuition, to believe that it had to do with getting attention from him, but Sasuke occasionally watched Hisao’s wide eyes — sharingan-dark, yet exactly the shape of his wife’s — and wonder if his son simply didn’t know what to make of him.

Today, though, Sasuke’s thoughts were too far away for worries like that.

Holding the baby against his side in one arm, he stepped up to the section of the memorial he knew as intimately as grief. There was no comfort to be found in tracing kanji, the elegant grooves that cut into smooth, polished stone to find the rougher, truer texture underneath. They were nothing more than a representation of a reputation — bloody and tragic but heroic, some would say, people who'd never known him — but he wasn’t looking for comfort anyway. It was tactile, it was real, it was solid and _there_ , which was better than ghosts and regrets. Intangible by definition. And it was routine, which grounded him.

He almost didn’t notice when Hisao reached out, nearly unbalancing himself, and placed his little palm over Sasuke’s violence-worn knuckles. “‘tou-sa,” he chirped, eyes open and bright. Sasuke met that gaze steadily, then readjusted his hold, gently taking his son’s hand and laying those small fingers over the characters of their surname.

“Oji-san,” Sasuke corrected him softly. Sakura’s strong arms wrapped around his waist from behind. He felt her press a kiss to the back of his neck, which was a comfort he accepted. The only one he would accept on this day.

Hisao’s face scrunched up in confusion over the new term, but that was all right. He had time to learn.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> It didn't really fit into the fic, but I had the idea that the kid shares Itachi's birthday and it's stuck with me. So there's a random factoid for you.


End file.
